Language guide

Turkish Names: Meanings, Origins & Traditions

Turkish names are recorded here in the modern Turkish Latin alphabet, which replaced the Arabic-based Ottoman script in 1928. Because Ottoman Turkish absorbed a large Arabic and Persian vocabulary, many familiar Turkish names, such as Elif or Emir, go back to Arabic or Persian words, while others, such as Arslan or Aynur, contain native Turkic elements. Each entry states which of these applies, based on the cited sources.

Türkçe

Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family

Published names: 7961
Scripts in our data: Latin
ISO 639-1: tr

Browse Turkish names

663 names · page 19 of 28

Tolay
“community, assembly”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tolga
“helmet”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tolgahan
“helmeted khan”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tolgan
“circling, wandering”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tolgay
“surroundings, vicinity”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tolgunay
“full moon”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tolonay
“full moon”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tolonbay
“full-moon lord”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tolun
“full, matured”
Turkish, Uyghur
Boy2 syllablesDocumented
Tolunay
“girl beautiful as the full moon”
From Turkic · Turkish, Uyghur
Girl3 syllablesDocumented
Tolunbay
“full-moon lord”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tolunbike
“full-moon lady”
From Turkic · Turkish
Girl4 syllablesEditorial
Toluntiğin
“full-moon prince”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy4 syllablesEditorial
Tömek
“heap of grain; coarse; short”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tomris
“historical warrior queen of the Massagetae”
From Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial

Tomurcuk
“bud”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tongal
“wealthy person; elderly man”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tongar
“big and strong; elderly”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tonguç
“eldest child; a kind of owl”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tongur
“round; slow-witted person; wedding master”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Topa
“clumsy person”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Topaç
“spinning top; sturdy child”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Topak
“round”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Topay
“full moon”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial

How Turkish names are written

Modern Turkish uses a 29-letter Latin alphabet introduced in 1928. Letters such as ç, ğ, ı, İ, ö, ş and ü matter for spelling: Gülnur and Gulnur are different spellings, and the dotless ı is a separate letter from i. Search on this site ignores these marks, but entries always show the documented spelling.

Where Turkish names come from

A name used in Turkish is not automatically Turkish in origin. Here is how the documented origins of the Turkish names published so far break down (a name with elements from two languages counts under both):

Turkic
4158
Arabic
2170
Persian
1209
Greek
42
Mongolic
39
Hebrew
28
French
14

Counted from 7961 published entries. Each name page explains its own etymology with sources.

Turkish names by meaning

Turkish belongs to the Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages, together with Azerbaijani and Turkmen. Related languages share many words, but a name is listed under a language only when it is documented there.

Other languages: Uyghur · Kazakh · Kyrgyz · Uzbek · Tatar · Bashkir · Tajik

References for this page

Wikipedia contributors. Turkic languages. Wikimedia Foundation, revision 1377797900. Accessed 2026-10-28. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wikipedia contributors. Turkish alphabet. Wikimedia Foundation, revision 1381762599. Accessed 2026-10-28. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.